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BACKGROUND
Here’s some of what the Lonely Planet – New Zealand chapter on the The West Coast has to say about the TranzAlpine Train:
“The TranzAlpine, one of the world’s great train journeys, traverses the Southern Alps between Christchurch and Greymouth, from the Pacific Ocean to the Tasman Sea – a sequence of unbelievable landscapes. Leaving Christchurch at 8.15am, it speeds across the flat, alluvial Canterbury Plains to the Alps’ foothills. Here it enters a labyrinth of gorges and hills called the Staircase, a climb made...